As most of you know by now, I work for a major credit card company as a customer service associate. On Saturday (5/27), I received a call from a card member whose card had been blocked by our security department due to a high risk charge. As soon as I asked him how I could help him, he said, “You stopped my charge. I want to know why.”

Fair enough. I looked and it had, indeed, been blocked by the fraud department. Since there can be a number of reasons for this, I tried to probe. I asked him if he was making a charge from a significant distance from his home area. Rather than answering my question, he returned with a snippy, “I’m standing at a store where my charge is being declined. Are you going to clear it or not?” So he had changed his mind about wanting to know why it was done.

Again, fair enough. I simply cleared the charge and told him that it would go through if they would run it again. He told me that he wanted me to wait on the line.

Also, fair enough. I told him that I would. While the charge was being reprocessed, he was speaking with another person who was there with him. The first thing that bothered me, other than his shortness with me, was that he said to this person, “He started asking me all of these questions, like if I’m ‘away from home.’ Like I care.” I guess, by now, that his low IQ had made him forget that he’d first asked me why his charge had been blocked.

Then he told the person, “I guess they did it for my safety (sarcasm evident in his tone).” He went on to say, “We all know I wouldn’t have to pay it if there were fraudulent charges on my account. They did it to protect their own [expletive].”

Finally, the charge ran through, so I asked him if there was anything else that I could assist him with. He said, “Yeah. Don’t ever block my card again. Next time, I’ll cut it up,” then hung up before I could say anything else. Gee, I tremble in fear that I may never have the pleasure of speaking with him again. Unfortunately, my note to clear the account only lasts for thirty days, so if he decides to go to Siberia without calling us to put a note on his account in advance-as I would have told him if he would have given me the chance to say anything to him at that point-he’ll probably be blocked again. Then, if he can get through to us from there, someone else will be blessed with his pleasant personality.

I just want to say something here. Yes, this guy did have a high credit limit on his account. Yes, he probably makes a great deal of money. Money doesn’t make him better than me, or anybody else. He (like many other people) needs to understand that the people with whom he speaks when he calls for customer service are human beings. They are all at least as good a human being as him. From my short conversation, I would say that most of them are better human beings than him. I was simply trying to help him. If he didn’t want that, then he shouldn’t have called in.

And, as for our company protecting ourselves from fraudulent charges? Well, yes. Doesn’t that make sense? If somebody were to steal this guy’s card and charge up 10K on it, our bank would have to eat it. Only an idiot would think that we shouldn’t be concerned about that. Furthermore, the customer has to go through months of hassle while the fraud investigation is going on, including filling out affidavits and, sometimes, filing police reports. So we are protecting our customers-even rude idiots, like him.

WRITING STUFF

I’m still going through the edit of one of the Adventure stories. It’ll probably be a while before I get back to the horror novel.